PowerStar Golf

If you’re a golfer, you may be familiar with the notion of an ugly par.

The term is often applied when a player hits a series of clearly bad shots, yet through either good fortune or perhaps one really good stroke, still somehow manages to get the ball in the hole in the proper number of strokes.

That’s pretty much my take on PowerStar Golf.

British developer Zoë Mode’s cartoonish golf game, published by Microsoft Game Studios through the Xbox Live store exclusively for Xbox One, is loaded with design missteps that make much of the experience nearly intolerable.

But the basic golf mechanics at the core of the game are actually okay. Which is to say, despite its many issues and gaffes, it’s a sufficient – if perhaps simplistic – virtual recreation of the Royal and Ancient game.

It’s just one that, for a myriad of reasons, I haven’t had much fun playing.

PowerStar Golf uses a classic three-tap swing metre rather than the analogue stick method found in games like those in EA’s PGA Tour series, and it’s generally well implemented.

It’s easy to strike the ball with some strength and hit it relatively straight, but you’ll need to hone your timing if you want to achieve maximum power and make perfect contact in the sweet spot. Your target power mark automatically adjusts as you move your desired landing area on the course, which takes a lot of the guesswork out of determining how much ‘oomph’ you’ll need to muster for each shot.

It also has most of the basic shot altering elements you’d expect in a golf sim. Rough and sand decrease maximum potential power, you can fade, draw, and spin the ball with relative ease, and elevation plays a key factor.

A few important elements are missing, though.

Lie angle isn’t part of the shot equation, which is disconcerting when your natural inclination is to compensate one way or another for a ball lying on a steep slope.

And while you can change between chip and pitch shots, there’s no option for a flop, which drives me particularly crazy since that’s my go-to approach shot when traveling over trouble — not just in golf games but also in real life.

Also frustrating is the inability to adjust trajectory – key for getting over or under trees, or landing safely on elevated or depressed fairways and greens. Most golf games at least offer the option of hitting the ball higher or lower (even if they do generally get it wrong). PowerStar Golf doesn’t even try.

It can be deeply frustrating when a golf game – which really ought to make you feel like a superstar golfer – doesn’t even let you hit shots that are in your bag in real life.

Still, I’ll concede that the basics of a capable golf game are in place and executed well enough so as to offer the potential for an average duffer to have a bit of fun.

That said, modern golf games need to go beyond the basics of just offering a satisfactory simulation of the sport. That’s been the lowest hurdle to clear for a couple of decades. We’re at the point now that they need to offer some compelling character building, a decent and balanced career mode, and punchy online play.

PowerStar Golf comes up lacking in all of these areas.

For starters, you can’t customize your own golfer, but instead must choose from a handful of highly stylized male and female characters with terrible attire and worse swings. The only way to improve their skills is by equipping them with better clubs and balls, which will alter a few key stats such as power and accuracy.

Worse still, clubs and balls are acquired randomly in blind packs purchased from the game’s virtual store using credits earned while playing. There’s no way to hone in on, say, a powerful driver if that’s what you really want or need. Even spending real money rather than virtual money only buys you the ability to purchase more blind packs.

The sole interesting facet to PowerStar Golf‘s character system is the unique special abilities possessed by each golfer and caddy. One of these abilities makes the hole magnetic, attracting the ball when it gets close. Another can split shots into five separate balls upon impact, letting you pick the best result – kind of a like a one-man Texas scramble. They’re a bit goofy, but kind of fun and occasionally useful when properly applied.

Still, I’m not sure I’d take these fantastical powers over the more realistic and practical ability to, say, try to add an extra 10 per cent to a shot when I really need it to clear a lake or bunker.

The career mode, meanwhile, is just plain botched.

Your career is essentially a series of events loaded with frustratingly convoluted objectives. Here’s an example: Play all of a course’s par fours in match play while losing no more than two holes and scoring birdies on all of the holes you win. In this event I actually found myself purposely drawing holes I could have won (I’d shank an easy putt or two at the end) simply so that I didn’t win the hole with a par or bogey and make it impossible to satisfy the gold medal victory condition of birdying every hole you win.

What’s more, an inordinate number of events pair you with computer-controlled opponents, which means you need to twiddle your thumbs watching their shots. Or at least as they set up. You can usually — though not always — skip the shot once it’s in flight.

Making things worse, computer controlled opponents are aggravatingly unpredictable. They could be all over the course for a couple of holes, taking penalty strokes and scoring triple- and quadruple-bogies, then hit perfect shot after perfect shot and notch multiple birdies in a row. It feels ridiculously random.

As for multiplayer, online play is pretty much non-existent. There’s a rivals mode that lets you play asynchronously against friends or strangers, but that’s it. Rivals is okay if all you want to do is play a round of golf – which may in fact be preferable to many of the career events – and you’ll probably earn some credits for your trouble, but it’s not nearly as thrilling or satisfying as the simultaneous online play found in other golf games, where you feel pressure mounting with each of your competitors’ shots.

A word of advice about Rivals: Make sure you turn off replays before starting or you’ll be forced to watch all of your competitors’ shots in turn throughout the match.

I’m not a golf game snob. I don’t need a hyper complex PGA tour simulation to be satisfied. I’m perfectly happy to play golf games with more whimsical elements. Sony’s Hot Shots Golf games are a blast, and Nintendo’s Mario Golf series is perhaps my favourite within the genre (I can hardly wait for Mario Golf: World Tour, coming to 3DS next year).

But I do have some basic demands.

I want a career mode that pulls me along without making me want to pull out what little hair I have left. I want to feel the gratification of progression, growth, and customization. I want to be able to go beyond the career and show off my abilities online.

PowerStar Golf doesn’t deliver on any of these counts.

The mechanics are fine, and I can even see it being fun for the occasional one-off round now and then, especially if you have someone in the same room with whom you can compete in a little local multiplayer.

But serious golf fans looking for a game capable of scratching their itch to hit the links through Canada’s long, cold winters aren’t going to find it here.